Custom Modes

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1

Anyway to create Custom Modes? In ST I created for example... Weekday Morning on. Weekday Morning off. Weekend Morning on. Weekend Morning Off. Etc...

Thanks

2

In theory, you can have whatever modes you want. I don't know of any limit to modes.

But the reality is, I don't think that is how they intended modes to be used. Most people use modes for a couple conditions, usually home vs away, or for day vs night vs evening. Or some combination thereof.

I am speculating a bit, but probably day/night/evening is the most common set of modes, so people can have lights go on and things happen depending upon sunlight.

If you make too many or too restricted or too complex modes, you ruin the ease of use in multiple places throughout the system. In other words, you might want many things to happen at sunrise, but the specific thing (turn off lights, open shades, etc) would come in a rule or automation.

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3

In terms of where to go, it is under Settings, Location and Modes:

HubSettings_LocationAndModes
HubSettings_LocationAndModes1263×746 105 KB

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4

I'd also agree with @neonturbo, tread carefully, keep it simple and perhaps introduce some of the variations you may want in other ways like your rules and other methods to change behaviour.

I can't remember if this is still a thing, but I think there may be one or two places in HE where you may get caught out by changing the name of a mode. I think they were working on plugging the gap, but might be something work keeping in mind if you start playing around with existing modes.

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5

I believe it is still an outstanding potential issue. Seems some of the code, apps and rules are looking for a string value while others are looking for the index value - those using the index value will continue to work without modification on a name change, the ones that use the string value would have to be manually updated.

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6

I will also agree with setting modes carefully. The modes I use combine occupancy/use. Home/Away/pre-sleep/Sleep/housekeeper

I use a virtual switch to set Dark for any mode.

Dark is controlled by a lux sensor that points out the front window

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7

This is what my mode looks like in Node-RED (it's stored as a Global Variable):

{
   "away":false,
   "guests":false,
   "alert":false,
   "timePeriod":"Night",
   "alertMsgs":[]
}

Once set the "timePeriod" gets pushed to my HE hubs as the current mode.

It might be useful if on HE we could define a custom json object like this in place of a string as a "mode" and also be able to access and modify individual properties..

8

I used to not use modes...just 3 global Boolean variables (home,sleep,dark) because that is what my old solution used. But I found the mode system to work well but I don’t like to use it for more than state(why I keep the dark variable)

9

I like to keep things together (encapsulated if you will :grin: ) so I don't have to worry about a bunch of different iterations of the same mode.. away-afternoon/away-guest-afternoon & home-alert/away-alert/home/away etc...